BETT 2015: Hable | Dream. Deploy.

Most companies have months of prep time for BETT, but because Mark Reynolds was working at Microsoft until New Year’s Eve, Hable have had a busy couple of weeks getting ready for the show! This post by Mark introduces his new start-up and tells us how Hable will help schools to “Dream Big and Deploy Fast”…

By Mark Reynolds, founder of Hable

Leaving the Microsoft Education team was a huge decision for me. I’ve had 5 happy years with the company and loved being part of a brilliant UK team, within a huge global company. But the fact is, I’ve always wanted to run my own company and now is the right time for me to give it a go.

What do Hable do?

Hable’s mission is to inspire people to do great things, then empower them with useful technology. We deliver expert consultancy and learning experiences, to help schools and universities dream big and deploy fast. We help our customers innovate, while making technology feel natural and useful, delivering modern experiences for students, teachers and school leaders. Experience has taught us to learn about an organisation and its people first and to talk about technology second.

Most of our work in the first few months is on Office365, helping our customers understand the various components of the free Microsoft solution and then deploy and embed that into their organisation. For some, that is about helping the in-house IT team to create a launch plan and training program for the roll-out of Office365 as a complete platform. For others, it is about taking a specific part of Office365 and using it to meet a particular need – eg) a University wanting to use Lync & Skype for Distance Learning and Webinars. We are also offering end-user level training on Office365, for schools who have got the platform deployed but are still struggling to make it stick with their staff.

Who are Hable working with?

John Barneby is the Head of IT at Oasis Community Learning. Oasis are rolling out Office365 across their network of 43 Academies, as well as for their charities and international branches. John knows how important it is to have an independent viewpoint sometimes and that’s where Hable came in:

“We are using Hable to support the rollout of our OasisZone platform, which is built on Office365. The OasisZone has to meet the needs of many different stakeholder groups across Oasis, from teachers and pupils, to our Principals and National team. We have been working on the project for some time, but having a fresh perspective from Hable at the start of a new and important year for us, has already produced some positive results. Because of Mark’s background at Microsoft he is really well placed to advise us on Office365, but also has helped us shape our strategy and messaging to ensure that the platform’s benefits are understood by all of our users. The engagement has helped us take a step back and really evaluate what’s working and what’s not.”

BETT 2015

Hable don’t have our own stand this year. We’re a new start-up and BETT can be an expensive business! However, I will be presenting on the Microsoft stand (D270) at 11.30 and 3pm every day, as part of an exciting project we are doing with Skype and the BBC. We have a limited number of Hable T-shirts and Lanyards available at the show, which will be collectors’ items one day (we hope!) so be nice and you might even get a BETT freebie 🙂

If you’d like to meet up and find out more about Hable then please contact us through the website or tweet @themarkreynolds